


I'm Not Gonna Die Alone

by mzhlf



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn, an attempt at some backstory for young Astra, in which Kryptonians have soulmate dreams, which may or may not involve throwing headcanons at my computer screen and seeing what sticks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11052033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mzhlf/pseuds/mzhlf
Summary: When Astra first sees her soulmate, she is barely more than a girl.  Little does she know it would take decades before the woman of her dreams is even born.This is how they find each other.





	I'm Not Gonna Die Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Alright fam, I'm equal parts nervous and excited about this story in part because I'm trying my hand at world-building, and also because this idea that's been haunting me for weeks is just fucking weird.
> 
> This is probably the most ambitious thing I've ever tried to write. Incidentally, I'm looking for beta-readers, so let me know if you'd be up for it.
> 
> The title is taken from The Antlers - Putting The Dog To Sleep.

_Astra slowly opens her eyes._

_Air rushes against her mouth and nostrils, making it difficult to breathe. The long-sleeved black tunic that she fell asleep in is blown tightly around her shoulders, its hemmed edges fluttering around her knees._

_Coral-red clouds shrink below her bare feet, lit up like embers in the sunset. Coral-red clouds expand above her head, as if the sky is drawing her toward it._

_No… not quite. The ones above, that are getting closer, are merely a reflection, distorted ever so slightly by ripples on a shimmering, watery surface._

_Ah. She is plummeting upside down from a massive height into a body of water so vast that no land is visible at all._

_This realization should alarm her more than it does, but all she can focus on is how Rao’s light scatters from the sea like millions of tiny crimson crystals._

_She feels oddly safe._

_Her hair whips violently across her face - she slams her eyes shut out of reflex. The wind blows it back to the side - she opens them again._

_She is not alone._

_A taller woman in a black bodysuit falls parallel to her, facing her from about a handspan away. Dark, cheek-length hair dances across smooth, regal features as slightly upturned eyes rendered mahogany in the sunlight burn unblinkingly into her own. For a high-speed plummet, the experience feels oddly intimate._

_Compared to Astra, for whom puberty started barely a year ago, the woman looks quite a bit older, well into her first years of adulthood. Her features might be described as youthful, though no one would mistake her for an adolescent. High cheekbones, a straight nose, a well-defined jaw, red, red lips. Hers is an elegantly melancholic countenance, like a heroine from old legend._

_Astra has never been one to value intuition over rationality; even still, she knows that this stranger is unlike anyone she has ever met._ _Wonder weakens her limbs, warms her veins like slow-spreading magma, but if she’s good at one thing, it’s feigning composure._

_“I am Astra, second daughter of In-Ze.” She projects her voice over the rush of the wind and puts on her most winsome smile, although the effect is ruined when a chunk of her unruly hair flies into her mouth and she spits it out in a most undignified manner._

_For a brief moment the stranger - and Rao, what a gorgeous stranger she is - offers no reaction. Then, to Astra’s unadulterated delight, she smiles._

_“And what is your name?” Astra calls, and holds her breath in anticipation._

_The stranger makes no reply. Astra rolls her eyes at her own foolishness._

_“That, by the way, was a rhetorical question. I know you cannot answer me, because you are not really you.” She glances upward at the rapidly approaching surface of water. “At least, I certainly hope not. I learned in basic engineering last week that the terminal velocity of a falling Kryptonian is seventy-one meters per second. If we collide with the water at even half that speed, death is all but instantaneous.”_

_That faint smile she elicited just a moment ago widens into a grin, and then a laugh she can't quite hear, and Astra feels something inside her chest expand right along with it. Sheer elation bubbles beneath her sternum._

_Laughter fills her soul just as water breaches her lungs._

* * *

If Astra had to pick what she loves most about her place of birth, it might just be the architecture.

Argo City sits on an uneven plateau overlooking a valley. Towering adamantite beacons toe the edge of the sheer cliff, lighting the way for travelers and explorers as well as warning against potential threats. (There is a sharp keenness about her, isn't there? Is she watching vigilantly from up high as stars and satellites light up her face through a one-way window?)

The city proper is tiered so that many of its distinguishable structures are visible even from a modest vantage point. Closer to the lower residential areas, vertical gardens and climate-controlled farms house millions of plant cultures from thousands of alien worlds. Their exotic leaves and vines are silhouetted against the white, muted lights of libraries and holographic archives. (Perhaps she is an archivist? Eyes like hers must contain secrets the likes of which Astra cannot even imagine.)

Looming above the gardens and data centers is a complex, interconnecting network of military and technological structures: medical facilities, birthing matrices, gene storages, tech foundries, the Military Guild complex. (The bodysuit suggests soldier, though that could just as easily be Astra projecting herself onto her image. But is there a possibility? Could it be a rare moment of intuition? Perhaps... perhaps she serves on a starship? Are they destined to fight side by side, sharing the noble burdens of the battlefield, righting the galaxy’s wrongs together?)

Above that, the market district houses thousands of businesses: exotic cuisines; vibrant, morphable fabrics; sleek hovercars; robots of all shapes and purposes. Anything one could ever want is just a hovercar drive away. (Is she as well-to-do as her noble bearing would suggest? Or does she simply possess a self-assurance that transcends common envies? Astra can't quite decide if the influence that marrying into a Great House would confer is worth the obligatory social functions.)

Near the top, Millennia-old Raoist temples with red, steepled spires pay homage to the heavens. Their white stone pillars bear crystalline statues of smooth-faced youth, gazing skyward with their arms outstretched in rapture or in prayer.

Hovercars weave around Argo City’s many vital organs in shimmering, intricate veins of silver-blue, making it thrum with an otherworldly sentience.

But none of this would be complete without the most important piece of all: a massive cubic structure they call the Symmetry, gleaming opaquely at the very center. Each side measures more than twelve hundred meters, and yet it stays balanced on a single corner. The adjudicators share usage of it with a subdivision of the Science Guild, but that is really just an afterthought. Its singular purpose seems to be to laugh in the face of physics, and through force fields, intricate wiring, and sheer Kryptonian audacity, it does exactly that.

(There is no entrance at the bottom of the Symmetry, for that would ruin the surrealism of that crisp corner gently touching the ground at perfect forty-five-degree angles. Instead, one enters via platforms at each of the outward-facing corners some nine hundred meters off the ground.)

None of the architecture needs to be actively maintained - nothing in Argo City does; minimalist machines with kind voices keep everything in mint condition. Even the relatively squat residential dwellings, with curved ceilings that rise from the ground like tsunami waves, shine pristine.

In Argo City, the best is always yet to come. Its youth look to the future just as the temple statues look to the stars, just as Astra looks to the nighttime cityscape, wide awake and teeming with anticipation.

She has always been eager for the future. And now that it has a face, it’s not coming nearly fast enough.

“I need not have worried,” are the first words to fall from her lips as Alura joins her, yawning and rubbing at her eyes.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Alura’s voice is petulant and thick with sleep. “What are you doing out here?”

As twins, they have always had an innate sense of when the other experiences strong emotions; Alura must have woken up shortly after her and found it impossible to fall back asleep. Astra glances at her with equal parts affection and apology.

“Remember when I asked Mother what distinguishes a soulmate dream from an ordinary one?”

Alura’s eyes drift closed tiredly and she nods.

“She said that I need not worry, that there is a unique feeling of... serenity, of lucidity. I think I know what she means.”

Alura’s brow knits as her sleep-addled brain processes her sister’s words. Astra waits patiently.

Sure enough, exactly five seconds later, Alura’s eyes snap open and she braces her hand on Astra’s arm, as if the sheer impact of her words had nearly knocked her clean off her feet. There’s an urgent question in her expression, which Astra answers with an uncharacteristically tentative nod.

Alura’s mouth falls open. “Oh my Rao.”

And, as if the smile that stretches over her sister’s features gives Astra permission to finally be outwardly ecstatic, she smiles. She grins. She beams. Alura pulls her into a hug, and her cheeks start to hurt.

Alura pulls back rather suddenly and pins her with an expectant look. “Well?”

Astra had been excited to gush to Alura from the moment she woke up, but now that they’re here, she’s a little indecisive as to where to even start. Wide gray eyes identical to her own flit over her face as if searching for some subtle yet profound change, something undefinable to mark the passage of an important milestone into adulthood - which is ridiculous, of course. The Astra that woke up a few minutes ago is not markedly different from the one that fell asleep the night before. The knowledge of what her soulmate looks like has little to no bearing on how she interacts with the world around her.

And yet, most Kryptonian cultures consider it both an important moment in growing up and a kind of divine reassurance: those who never experience soulmate dreams have a far greater likelihood of dying young. No matter how you look at it, it is a joyous occasion.

Astra smiles teasingly, enjoying being the wiser twin for once.

“Well, to begin, we were both falling to our deaths…”

* * *

_“Is it not strange that even though we are always dying, I am never afraid?” Astra asks the image of her soulmate, shifting uncomfortably as a harsh sun beats down upon them._

_There is nothing but desert all around. A single tree, once majestic, stands lonely on flat, arid sand. From its barren, twisted branches hangs a metal cage that entraps them both._

_“This is my eleventh dream of you in the past year,” she muses matter-of-factly, “and we have been in mortal peril on no less than ten occasions.”_

_The metal bars are hot to the touch, so they lean against one another. The woman's chin is marble-smooth against Astra’s forehead, and her shirt is soft beneath Astra’s fingers._

_“Mother says that my thrill-seeking mind continues to invents terrible situations for us in order to avoid growing bored. Father jokes that I am quite literally dying to meet you.”_

_The bottom edge of her knife-straight haircut teases lightly against Astra’s cheek, and despite the cloying heat, she leans in just a bit closer, listening to the steady rhythm of her heart._

_“Alura believes it is Rao’s way of telling me that our fates are invariably intertwined. That we would grow to love each other so fiercely that anything that may destroy one of us would surely destroy us both.”_

_“And what do you believe, Astra, second daughter of In-Ze?” the woman asks._

_Astra is so startled at actually hearing her speak - it's really not supposed to happen, at least not to her knowledge - that the shock of it jolts her awake._

* * *

“The cultures of most intelligent species are at least somewhat influenced by their experience of soulmates,” explains Professor Gol-Van, a retired ambassador working part-time as a xeno-diplomacy instructor at the Military Guild.

“Take the mighty, winged Forgabisk, whose profound psychic bond allows them to experience their mates' pain as acutely as their own. It was perhaps inevitable that they would value empathy above all else. Alas, their steadfast aversion to aggression has made them notoriously prone to surrender, and despite their near-unparalleled aptitude in engineering and technology, they have lost over seventeen percent of their territory to the Valdorn over the last nine years.”

Astra sighs at the beautiful four-armed hologram at the center of the room. The Forgabisk are known for their writing and artistry: poetry capturing the very essence of interconnection and brotherhood, music so exquisite that one of Krypton’s greatest philosophers had once likened it to seeing the stars for the very first time.

“It is a pity,” says Tel-Ra, a fellow recruit sitting next to her. Over the last few months of grueling physical training, she has come to enjoy his company.

“The Forgabisk?”

Tel smiles sadly. “The indiscriminate cruelty of the cosmos, my friend.”

Astra frowns. “A surprisingly cynical sentiment, given your choice of occupation. Is this not why the Military Guild exists? To defend Krypton, and to protect the galaxy from the likes of the Valdorn?”

“But therein lies the paradox. No Forgabisk would wish for us to kill on their behalf. The beauty of their artistry, the brilliance of their utopian cities… it all depends precisely on that which dooms them.”

Astra’s frown deepens and she feels a pang of injustice, turning ever so slightly toward him and keeping her voice low. “So we simply watch as their children are enslaved and their libraries destroyed?”

Tel shrugs and the gesture is resigned rather than nonchalant. “You must not forget that we are allied with the Valdorn. The valdorium trade lines the pockets of some of our most influential merchants."

“That alliance predates their bloody campaign,” Astra defends. “Once the Ocria Accord expires, the High Council will use all their power to bring them to justice.”

Tel gazes at her for a long moment, before finally tilting his head in acquiescence. “I suppose one can hope.”

**Author's Note:**

> Love it? Hate it? Have any suggestions on the world-building? Please leave a comment. Constructive criticism is absolutely welcome.
> 
> Oh, and just as a side-note: one thing I had considered but wasn't quite sure about was using the Kryptonian words for time. On one hand, they're there, and they're freaking cool. On the other hand, who here knows what a funf or a thrib is? I sure didn't. Also, even though there are units of measurement for time, there doesn't seem to be any for distance, and writing something like "meters per thrib" feels weirdly inconsistent to me. Of course, I'd also considered making up my own words for distance, but then I'd have to tack on translations and poor readers would have to scroll to know what the hell I'm talking about, so I finally decided fuck it. Still, be a pal and let me know if you have opinions about this specifically?


End file.
